I’m pretty far in the negative on my company. I’ve invested about $50,000 and 4 years of work into it, and it has not become profitable. But, its operating expenses are pretty low, so I have enough to maintain it for about 4 more years. If it’s still not profitable then, I’d have to look for outside investors. The majority of the expense was lawyer fees for the patent.
Good luck with your company. That sounds like a lot of pressure. I’m glad that you have a few more years of buffer room, and I hope that you’re able to look after yourself in the meantime; I know how easy it is to burn out when you’re trying to run your own business.
Its hard to asses things when i dont know what you are doing, but average for new company to get profitable is about 2-3 years, but its not uncommon for it to take +5 years. Especially if its a new thing like the patent makes it sound.
At the four year mark i would recommend you to take a step back and look the processes you do and try to figure out if there is a way to streamline something on it. Its really hard to notice some inefficiences when you have used to do things in that way.
If you have a lot of competion on your business try to figure what is a thing they do poorly and try to do it better. That way the people who are disapointed for that specific thing have good reason to switch to use your product. You dont need to be better than everybody at everything, just find the group of customers that find you as the best fit.
Also if you chance something you do, dont get too stuck in fear of loosing customers. If some change makes you loose 10 customers, but makes you 20 new ones thats not a loss.
If you are operating at loss raising the price is not unreasonable thing to do. For excample if you raise the price 5% you can loose 5% of the customers and make the same profit with 5% less work
I’m pretty far in the negative on my company. I’ve invested about $50,000 and 4 years of work into it, and it has not become profitable. But, its operating expenses are pretty low, so I have enough to maintain it for about 4 more years. If it’s still not profitable then, I’d have to look for outside investors. The majority of the expense was lawyer fees for the patent.
Good luck with your company. That sounds like a lot of pressure. I’m glad that you have a few more years of buffer room, and I hope that you’re able to look after yourself in the meantime; I know how easy it is to burn out when you’re trying to run your own business.
Its hard to asses things when i dont know what you are doing, but average for new company to get profitable is about 2-3 years, but its not uncommon for it to take +5 years. Especially if its a new thing like the patent makes it sound.
At the four year mark i would recommend you to take a step back and look the processes you do and try to figure out if there is a way to streamline something on it. Its really hard to notice some inefficiences when you have used to do things in that way.
If you have a lot of competion on your business try to figure what is a thing they do poorly and try to do it better. That way the people who are disapointed for that specific thing have good reason to switch to use your product. You dont need to be better than everybody at everything, just find the group of customers that find you as the best fit.
Also if you chance something you do, dont get too stuck in fear of loosing customers. If some change makes you loose 10 customers, but makes you 20 new ones thats not a loss.
If you are operating at loss raising the price is not unreasonable thing to do. For excample if you raise the price 5% you can loose 5% of the customers and make the same profit with 5% less work
Well we’re all curious now…